Mithril Princess
by emerald sorceress
Summary: Kíli dreams of his little sister. Bard dreams of dragons and a woman with hair like sunlight on gold. Dís dreams of her daughter, holding a scythe encrusted in rubies. Buffy dreams of a blazing mountain, a man wreathed in shadow and a lidless flaming eye that sees everything and names her Slayer.


**Feedback**: Like a Hobbit loves food and cheer and comfy chairs. Feedback and criticism (but only constructive) is welcomed and appreciated.

**Disclaimer**: I don't own The Hobbit or LOTR and not even a smidge of BTVS, which is a terrible shame really, because if I did I'd be shockingly wealthy and nobody I like would die and everything would just be wonderfully lovely with just a smidgen of angst thrown in for good measure every now and then to keep everyone on their toes.

**Rating**: T for gore and violence, because The Hobbit was all goblins and beheadings and angst, and Buffy is death in heels.

**Summary**: Kíli dreams of his little sister. Bard dreams of dragons and a woman with hair like sunlight on gold. Dís dreams of her daughter, holding a scythe encrusted in rubies. The Scythe is named Death and it is a gift.

* * *

**I. Dís**

All her dreams are of her children. Her boys rush through her sleepscape, tumbling and energetic, laughing and play-fighting as she chases after them.

Sometimes she catches them and presses them to her bosom, hugging them close, the still lingering smell of their baby skin and hair catching on the breeze as she squeezes them close.

But more often than not they escape out of her fingers. Giggling, they run out of reach and she calls and calls until she is hoarse but her boys never come back.

She will wake, throat raw and face wet and leap from the bed to run to their rooms, where they sleep the sleep of innocence in their beds. She will run her fingers through Fíli's golden hair. Pull the blankets more firmly over Kíli from where they lie tangled at the bottom of the bed. Finally she will reach her daughter's crib.

Her shining, mithril girl.

All dwarrowdams dream of daughters, and this, her tiny blessing after losing her home and her One is her best comfort when the nights run hard and the days harder still.

She runs one finger over her baby's diamond blonde hair, thick and fluffy on her brow and thinks, _I would spare you all the pain in this world, my girl._ _My darling, Buffy._

But Dís knows this is impossible. For when she dreams of her daughter, she dreams of a young dwarrowdam clad in armour stained black with the blood of orcs, her shining hair rippling out behind her and mithril fire in her eyes.

Held aloft in one hand is a scythe, encrusted in rubies. The Scythe is named Death and it is a gift.

/

Years later, she watches as Thorin takes her sons from her on his quest, so young and bright with life. She clutches her daughter's hand in hers and thanks Mahal that at least she is spared Buffy, who is not of age and has been strictly forbidden from going or following after the Company.

It does not stop Dís from trembling though. Her youngest child watches her brothers and uncle leave with anticipation and hunger burning in her eyes.

She knows that soon her dreams are all she will have left of her children.

* * *

**II. Kíli**

He is of age now, but Kíli has never felt more like a dwarfling before. He and Fíli had begged and pleaded with Thorin to take them on the quest, wearing their uncle's patience down like grain under a millstone until finally he had given in and the brothers had found themselves members of the Company of Thorin Oakenshield.

But now, all Kíli can think of is his mother and sister at home in the Blue Mountains, for that is home, though Erebor has featured in every bedtime story he has ever been told. He knows the reason he pleaded to come was because Erebor is his uncle's home and his mother's and Kíli would do anything for love of them.

He misses his mother. The rub of her soft, black beard against his cheek. The teasing spark in her eyes when she would poke and prod Thorin out of one of his darker moods. Her scolding hands. Her gentle, rumbling laugh. The click of the beads in her braids. The sadness lurking in the corner of her mouth when she thought no-one saw. In the evenings, if he tilts his head and half closes his eyes, Thorin looks enough like Dís that he is comforted by the illusion that his mother is here with them.

But there is no-one to whom he can compare his sister. He has never been separated from his _namadith_ before and he feels the loss of her as though there is a pebble in his shoe- a constant, painful awareness with each footstep that takes him further away from her. He desperately wants to tell Bilbo about her as the hobbit is fascinated with every new thing he learns or sees around him, and Kíli knows he would have a captive audience. But dwarves keep their womenfolk sacred and secret, so he must recall his sister through whispered conversations with Fíli, trading stories in the dark of the night, when there is naught but the trees and the stars to eavesdrop.

It is Kíli who names her Buffy, mangling her true name with his enthusiasm even as he handles his sister as though she is made of fine spun glass.

It is Kíli who clumsily braids her hair each morning, twining the diamond blonde strands round her ears and over her shoulders, though he lets no-one near his own hair.

It is Kíli who sits her in his toy wagon and pulls her after him as she screams for him to go faster and faster down the mountain paths.

It is Kíli who jumps with her on her bed, who throws pilfered sweets into her open mouth, who tickles her and plays hide and seek.

Who punches the first lad he catches giving his sister kisses behind the blacksmith's forge.

Who secretly teaches her aim and patience when handling a bow, the weight of a sword in her hands and the feel of war.

There are other, more unpleasant memories though.

As the Company walks further from the Shire and into the wildness of the world, they creep from the corners of his mind and scratch, scratch, scratch away, leaving him restless and irritable. On evenings like these he asks his uncle for first watch and sits, fletching arrows by firelight as the rest of the company settles down around him and slips into sleep. He feels Thorin's watchful gaze upon him but eventually even this fades and he is left, Fili's head resting against his knee and he stares into the fire and lets the memories come.

_He doesn't remember how old he is; only that they are supposed to be looking after their sister, but she won't sleep and she's too young to play with. Bored and restless they pull faces at their sibling and pelt her with the soft knitted toys Dís has made but she doesn't cry or whimper; only stares up at them, wide eyed and adoring at her older brothers. It isn't long until he and Fíli grow bored of tormenting their placid baby sister and instead begin play-fighting with the toy swords Thorin had crafted earlier that year for them._

_Buffy watches wide eyed from her cot, sucking her thumb and twisting the strands of her mithril bright hair with her other hand as the two boys go back and forth, back and forth over the tiny room. The blunted metal blades crack together sharply and they are laughing as they dance around, enacting out their favourite bedtime stories, laughing and running and joking until Fíli's sword misses._

_The blade bashes against Kíli's wrist and there is white hot pain. Before he knows what he is doing anger rises and he pushes Fíli hard. Furiously._

_Fíli stumbles, the laughter fading into shock as he falls backwards._

_There is a whimper of noise as the cradle topples over as Fíli knocks into it. Then there is nothing but silence. The two brothers stare at each other and then at the overturned cot._

_And at the back of his throat, Kíli tastes the sting of iron and dread. _

_Frantic, he finds himself turning the cot over before he knows what he is doing, and there is his namadith, a gash just along her temple that stains her hair and nightdress garnet red. Tears leak from her eyes. _

"_Buffy!" Kíli reaches for her but the child flinches away, one hand still curled in her blood soaked hair and whimpers for their mother._

The wound scars into a thin silvery line and later Buffy will wear it proudly, claiming it as her first battle scar. Laughing, she will braid her hair deliberately away from her face to show it off and bat away Kíli's reaching hands.

But Kili will only ever see it as his failure to protect his little sister. And as the company enters Mirkwood, the memory is slowly twisted and corrupted until in his dreams he turns the cot over and his sister lies still, her eyes glazed open and empty and the floor is sticky with blood.

Those nights he wakes screaming and only Fíli understands, for in the shadows under his brother's eyes he sees the same shared nightmare.

* * *

**III. Bard**

_From above you, it devours._

He's had the same dream for weeks now. The dream of dragons.

The stink of smoke fills the air first. Brimstone and ash, heat so dry it strips the moisture from his mouth and eyes, and in the distance a burst of flame and noise, brilliant against the gathering storm clouds.

But it is the woman who comes to stand beside him, not quite reaching his shoulder, who scorches his skin, who makes his heart burn as she places her fingers on his arm and directs his aim. Across her back is strapped a scythe the colour of blood and she comes offering death. His heart aches for her- the gleam in her eyes, the curve of her lips, the line of her throat. _I do not even know your name _he thinks.

Fire begins to reign down from the sky but it is nothing to the fire burning in her veins, the gold that runs in her hair and the snare of her eyes.

The dragon draws closer now, breathing fury onto the town and there is screaming in the air as she hands him the black arrow to fit to his bow.

_Why are you here?_ _Why do you come to me in dreams?_ But her fierceness and her beauty steal his words so he says nothing. Instead, he fixes his target and flexes his fingers, drawing the bowstring back until the tension makes his muscles ache.

He can see the rough texture of the beast's scales, the serpent tail, the glowing eyes of Smaug as he snaps his jaw and roars damnation. His belly is hardened with jewels and coins but there on his breast is a small empty patch. An opening. His heart.

The arrow sings as it is released.

Bard wakes, sheets soaked in sweat and empty from the loss of the dream, the loss of her, a woman he isn't sure is even real.

_Wait for me_, he thinks. _Wait for me and I will find you_.

But it is the dragon that finds him first.

/

Bard feels the bow in his hand and the grit of ash on his brow and narrows his eyes. She does not appear as he fits the arrow to his bow nor does he feel her guiding hand upon his arm as he takes his aim.

He misses the warmth of her by his side as the arrow streaks through the air. He can only imagine her victory cry ringing out across the burning town as the dart pierces dragon hide and the beast screams his death song and falls.

He snatches sleep in the moments that duty does not call him, when he is not pulling screaming women from smoldering houses or shepherding his people to safety or giving orders to his men or tending to the injured and his children. Resting, soot blackened and exhausted on the banks of the river he slips into dreams. But even these are empty of her and everything.

He has little time to mourn her absence though as the stink of dragon is replaced with the stink of greed and negotiation. The dwarves give nothing and the elves keep pushing and Bard has slain a dragon but this seems to matter little. He has rid the mountain of a monster but only created more.

Then the Grey Wizard comes and there is nothing to do but sound the call to arms as orcs blacken the distant hills.

Suddenly war is upon them.

But they are overwhelmed. There are six orcs to every man, unnumbered wargs and goblins and the sheer mass of them; fetid, foul and corrupting leaves little room for hope. Dwarves and men and elves alike fall around him. Bard remains standing, dealing death from his bow and when the fighting becomes too close he pulls out his sword and hacks a path through the battlefield.

For he has just seen the King Under the Mountain fall defending his nephews who lie, unmoving upon the ground. The Pale Orc stands above them, gums exposed in a snarl of victory as his warg circles them and he raises his cleaving sword- a jagged thing of biting bone- to take the dwarf king's head.

The orcs around him are too many and Bard knows he will never get there in time.

Except, suddenly there is a small figure, cowled and wearing thin plated armor splattered black with orc blood. A figure with a scythe encrusted round the haft with rubies thick as a man's wrist, a scythe that sings as it swings through flesh and bone.

The figure rips through the orcs like a river through earth, each movement fluid and deadly, the scythe sinking through bodies and out again, no motion wasted, each tiny gesture bringing death on swift blades.

The orcs, bewildered and butchered are forced back and Bard has never seen anything like it. And then an orc, gutted like a rabbit on the hunter's table, catches at the scytheman's hood with dying fingers and the cowl rips and falls.

Out flows hair that gleams like sunlight on diamonds and Bard thinks _I know you. I know you, beloved. _

She fights with grace he has never seen in any species on Middle-Earth, her face blank of anything but the fight, her eyes filled with the gleam of endings.

The white warg is dead before he even realises what she has done.

"Bad dog," he hears her mutter as she pulls her scythe back and stands over the bodies of Thorin's nephews. The king, barely conscious upon the ground, is staring at her with something like horror writ upon his features, fear clear in every line on his face. But it is fear for her and Bard wonders what she means to the dwarf, even as he circles nearer and decapitates the next orc he meets.

"What are you doing here, _ghivashel?" _Thorin groans, his fingers futilely reaching for his sword that lies too far out of reach, wounded as he is.

"Battle first, argue later," she sings even as Azog laughs and hefts his weapon.

"You send women and children to fight me now, dwarf? I shall defile her and then string her entrails from the roof of my new throne room as you watch," the Pale Orc grins. "You will both suffer beautifully, I guarantee it."

The young woman swings her arm round and eviscerates the orc creeping up behind her. "Your taste in interior décor aside, did you not see what I did to your little doggie?" she taunts, wiping blood out of her eyes with the back of her hand. "I'm gonna have him skinned and use him as a rug. I'd do the same with you, but they're not gonna be able to even find all the pieces of you once I'm finished."

"You think you can defeat me, little maggot?" Azog snorts and swings his sword at her so that she ducks and rolls and snaps her scythe out to meet the blow. "I will butcher you like so much meat. I have taken the heads of kings and princes and one little dwarf bitch will not stop me from ending Durin's line."

Blood splatters out and the orc bellows in fury. She has caught his side with her scythe and she grins, but the smile is dark and hungry and full of teeth.

"I am of Durin's line," she breathes, "and I will kill you. And after I have killed you I will wipe out your army and every other fugly evil thing that dares to threaten my family," and the certainty in her voice makes even the Pale Orc hesitate. She flashes her teeth at him. "Capiche?"

Then she dances. There is no other word for the clash of blades, the smooth slide of her movements, the shape of her body twisting and ducking and striking out. Blood arcs out around them as she battles Azog and Bard can only catch glimpses of her as he is forced back into the fighting, goblins leaping at him with swords drawn. His arrows bring them down before they can so much as touch him.

There is a bellow and suddenly Azog stands, blood pouring from the stump of his shoulder.

She shakes her head and the scythe runs black and red, slicking her fingers on the handle. "I told you. I'll kill you, even if I have to do it one piece at a time."

But Azog has lost an arm before and it has not stopped him. Barely slowed he uses all of his strength and brings his bone sword down and for the first time she stumbles. The weight bears down upon her and she is forced back, down into the mud. Her foot slips on a puddle of blood and suddenly she is on her knees, sword braced above her head to stop the blade cleaving her skull in two.

The Pale Orc laughs and growls out something in the Black tongue, something harsh and foul. He presses forward and she cries out.

Suddenly she twists and slides out of his reach, rolling to her side, leaping up and slicing in ever widening circles.

Surprised, Azog ducks back and once again the blades meet but this time it is she who is on the offensive. She swings once, twice, three times and catching his legs, she slices through the marrow and sinks into bone.

Crippled, Azog falls to his knees.

"_Khayum Thane,"_ she hisses out between her teeth. Then her scythe falls and the Pale Orc's head flies from his shoulders.

For a moment the body wavers, and then slumps forward into the mud and lies, twitching for a few moments before it stills.

She pushes herself to her feet and picks up Azog's head. "_Baruk Khazâd! Khazâd ai-mênu!"_ she cries and holds the head aloft, her scythe clutched in her other hand. Around her the battle stills as the war cry echoes out, everyone turning to watch the young woman holding the head in her hands, face streaked with blood.

And then there is a rush, a noise as the dwarves around them take up the cry.

_Baruk Khazâd! Khazâd ai-mênu_!

Suddenly victory is not so far out of their grasp.

The battle turns in their favour, but Bard watches as she drops the head and turns to kneel beside Thorin and his nephews. The King has passed out long ago and for the first time he sees her tremble, fingers reaching out to check for a pulse.

She presses her forehead to theirs gently and rocks back on her heels. "Someone get healers here, now!" she shouts, pressing her hands to Thorin's chest, stanching the sluggish flow of blood.

A goblin chooses that moment to raise his axe behind her. Instinct guides the arrow that leaves Bard's bow and the creature falls down dead, the arrow shaft lodged, quivering between his eyes.

She turns her head and her own eyes widen in disbelief. "Bowman," she murmurs in wonder. "You're real?"

He lowers his bow and inclines his head. He does not know her name so he greets her with the only title that befits her. "Slayer."

Above them comes the piercing cry of birds.

The Eagles are here.

* * *

**IV. Thorin**

He wakes in the evening with pain that grips his torso in throbbing bands, unsure of the time or the day or who of his Company lives. He casts his gaze over the tent he finds himself, the canvas walls high and large but the room warm from the fire burning in a small brazier in one corner. The flames cast the tent in flickering shadows but his eyes pick out the sleeping forms of Fíli and Kíli, their chests rising and falling in shallow syncopation as they lie on cot beds.

There is a figure sat by his own bedside and Thorin's breath momentarily catches. Though small in stature like all dwarves and simply dressed in Durin blue, leathers and fur, her hair glows in the firelight like molten diamonds, tied back in trailing braids and a silvery scar runs across her temple. She has Fíli's eyes and Kíli's smile but her ease with the scythe that she is sharpening in her hands is all Dís.

"Buffy."

"You're awake," she breathes in relief, pressing her forehead against his before standing up. "Thank Mahal. I'll go and fetch Oin-"

"You're going nowhere," he growls and the anger suddenly comes upon him, hot and heavy.

"Seriously?" she says, raising an eyebrow but sitting down slowly. "We're going to do this now?"

Thorin ignores her. "What were you thinking? Were you thinking at all? You could have been killed, you could have died-"

"You nearly did," she points out folding her arms. "If I hadn't been here you'd be in the Halls of our Fathers about now."

"Do you wish me to thank you on bended knee?" Thorin cries incredulously. "I would rather die a thousand deaths than see harm come to you, _ghivashel_. What if I had lived and you had died? How could I have lived with my grief and the grief of your mother and brothers?"

"But I didn't die. I'm fine."

But Thorin is barely listening, lost in memories. "I knew I should never have believed you'd be left behind so easily. You were so quiet, no protestations to go with your brothers when they pleaded to come, no trying to sneak off to come with us. I should have realised it was all a ruse, that you'd disobey your mother and I."

"Technically I didn't disobey you. You completed your quest, you took back the mountain, I only came later for the battle and that was totally different," she protests. "Besides, I wasn't going to let you have all the fun."

"Fun," Thorin thunders. "You think battle is _fun_?"

"It's more fun than waiting at home, flinching everytime a raven appears thinking it would say you were all dead!" Buffy retorts furiously.

"And now you are not at home and what will your _amad_ think when she finds you gone?"

"I left a note." Buffy looks ashamed but defiant as Thorin swears viciously in Khuzdul. She raises her chin. "I'd do it again if I had a choice."

"Do it again? When Erebor is restored you'll never again leave the mountain, let alone see battle."

"You can't treat me like a child!"

"You _are_ a child!" Thorin explodes and only subsides when pain makes his vision turn white for a few moments. "When I was fighting I knew that if I and your brothers died that you and your mother could still lead our people. And then to see you there… I thought I had led all of my sister's children to their graves and the shame and the grief almost overwhelmed me."

Suddenly all of his anger drains as his fingers reach out to touch her braids, tracing the intricately plaited hair, fingers ghosting over the stories woven there until his fingers halt over the newest braid, a thick twist of hair looping from above her left ear in a tight waterfall cascade. The braid that spoke of slaying enemies of one's kin. "I would have spared you this," he murmurs.

"You can't wrap me in mithril forever," Buffy says, covering his hand with hers. "I chose this, I'm proud to wear it. I am the _abzagâl_ _rukhsel _now."

And Thorin thinks, _but __you should never have had to wear it. When did you stop being my little girl and become a Slayer?_

Kíli's voice comes from across the tent, scratchy with pain and sleep. "What's all the shouting about?"

Buffy squeezes his hands before throwing herself at her brother, her smile blinding. "Kí! You're awake!"

"Buffy? Ow, get off me. You're smothering me, I can't breathe, Buffy! Buffy!" but Kíli is laughing as his sister tackles him.

Thorin's mouth cracks into a smile. But his heart will not be so easily soothed and he wonders when his sister's children will stop carrying his own burdens.

/

There are other hurts too.

It has been days since the Battle was won but Thorin has heard no news of their Burglar. The Company are careful not to utter his name in his hearing because the thought of Bilbo hurts their King. There is anger and betrayal and regret (so much regret that Thorin thinks he may drown in it) and the pain lodges deep in his breast.

They cannot find Bilbo, but in the end it is Bilbo who comes to him, and the resulting conversation wrings Thorin of every feeling, until he is spent and drained and aching.

He knows he deserves this, that all of the words Bilbo flings at him, the dark ring of bruises around his throat from where Thorin dangled him over the mountain's edge, are his reward for his dragon madness. His sickness. That he may have led his people home and succeeded as a King, but he has failed as a friend.

But when Bilbo does not immediately spit in his face and leave; when the days run on with no mention of returning to the Shire, when Bilbo lets the Company weave him back into their lives and into the future of Erebor, Thorin allows himself to hope.

These hurts will scar he knows. But they will heal and perhaps that is enough for now.

* * *

**V. Fíli.**

Fíli's first memory is of the glitter of diamond gold in the dark, the shimmering glinting mass held in a roughly hewn cradle.

His chubby fingers reaching out to grab a fistful of the precious, shining thing. His mother's chapped hands pulling his own away gently and her tired, kind voice sweeping round him as she picks him up and presses him close to her, her woollen dress scratching his cheek.

"Don't disturb your _namadith_, Fíli. Come, let us see what mischief Kíli has managed to find himself in."

And his mother is carrying him away from the treasure and he can only watch as it grows more distant and dim until he can no longer see its light. Tears wet his mother's dress.

It is only later that he realises the diamonds and gold are his sleeping newborn sister with her halo of white blonde hair.

The same glittering light swims before his eyes now. He reaches up a hand to touch it, but his hand is so heavy he can't reach. Something catches it and his vision swims. He blinks hard and the gold narrows, his vision focusing until he realises it is his sister holding his hand.

"Buffy?" he breathes, frowning in confusion. "I don't understand."

"Don't worry, you're safe. We're in the King's tent."

"But you're supposed to be in the Blue Mountains. What are you doing here?"

"Making curtains," she rolls her eyes. "What does it look like? I came, I kicked ass, won the battle and saved the day. You're welcome, by the way." She holds up a finger. "And spare me the lecture, I've already had it from Thorin. He made me feel like I was forty again."

Fíli's mouth quirks into a grin. "Well if Uncle's shouting, he must be well."

"He's so full of holes we could use him as a sieve, but the healers tell me he'll live to yell at me another day," she says, nudging him with her elbow.

"Kíli?"

She points to the bed pushed up next to his, where Kíli lies sprawled asleep on his stomach. "Woke up before you did. His attempt to become a pincushion was mostly successful, but the healers removed all of the arrows and thank Mahal none of them were poisoned."

"And the rest of the Company?"

"Considering you all decided it was a great idea to take on a dragon with only fourteen people I think you're all pretty lucky," she says dryly. "There's some wicked looking scarring between them and Dwalin nearly lost an eye but they'll all live."

Fíli watches her carefully as she delivers her report. Her tone is light and dry but her eyes tell a different story. "And you, _namadith_?" he asks. "Surely you cannot have escaped the battle unscathed?"

"I broke a nail," she admits ruefully, "and my armour got really gross and orc blood just does not come out in the wash but I'm fine otherwise."

Fíli stares incredulously at her then laughs softly even as it makes him wince in pain. "I should be furious you're here, but I'm too happy to be angry. Come here." He pulls her to him and rests his forehead against hers. "I missed you."

She tugs his moustache braids. "Missed you too."

/

Fíli cracks one eye open, unsure of what has woken him. It's still dark outside, moonlight filtering through the tent flaps and his sister is pressed warmly against him, her breathing slow and steady. Kíli must have woken in the night, because now he is sleeping on the other side of Buffy, hemming her in, legs and elbows tangled around her, like a kitten trapped in wool.

Then it comes again, the whistling bird cry at the tent flap. He feels Buffy shift against him as she wakes and then carefully disengages herself from them. Kili mumbles something and subsides back into sleep even as their sister slips over to the tent flap, before glancing back over the room to check all are sleeping soundly. Fíli shuts his eyes quickly. When he opens them again his sister is outside the tent, but that is no matter, for dwarves are born to see and hear well in the dark and he can make out two silhouettes outside the tent door.

Buffy's voice comes to him, the tone gently amused. "A ring? Why Gandalf, I never knew you cared."

"Can you feel it?" the wizard demands anxiously, voice hoarse and pressing. "Does it call to you?"

"All gold and metals call to dwarves-"

"But you're not a dwarf, are you?" The insult almost sends Fíli from his bed, injured as he is, the anger rising up hot and heavy at the slur upon his sister. The blood pounds so loudly in his ears he almost misses Buffy's reply.

"You're treading dangerous ground, _Tharkûn_," she murmurs, her tone low and calm as only the storm can be before it breaks upon the land.

"I know who you were, Buffy. Who you are."

"That was another life. This is who I am now."

The tent flap moves in the breeze and Fíli watches as Gandalf says something he doesn't quite catch, but the wizard drops something else into her hand, a glittering piece of silver metal, too small for Fíli to see what as Buffy curls her fist around it.

"And yet you are still _abzagâl_ _rukhsel. _Slayer. It is not a title to escape, princess, it is who you are. Who you have always been."

"What do you want me to do?"

"Destroy a great evil, which I once foolishly believed to have been defeated," he replies and the wizard's face, wrinkled and shadowed beneath his hat suddenly looks so very, very old as he tucks something gold and glimmering into the folds of his robes. "But it is rising once more and unchecked it will ravage Middle Earth, killing every good and innocent thing in it."

"Must be Tuesday," she mutters and clasps whatever the wizard has given her around her neck before tucking it beneath her own tunic.

"It will be difficult and it will be dangerous. You may not come back the same," Gandalf warns.

"Or at all, right?" she points out, before she sighs and her fingers flex as though missing the grasp of her scythe's haft. "Uncle's gonna be mad. Not that that'll be much of an attitude adjustment. And you're telling _amad_ or the deal's off. "

"Ah." For a moment Gandalf looks genuinely terrified at the thought of Dís. "I take it that is non- negotiable?"

"I'm saving the world, the least you can do is inform my mother," she retorts even as the corners of her mouth curl into a soft grin and Fíli turns away, hands clenching into fists.

Buffy does not return for some time and when she does, snuggling back into her brothers, her head rests in the hollow between Fíli's shoulder blades. His eyes remain open, glaring into the darkness, knuckles white where they fist the bed sheets.

When he finally gives into sleep, his dreams are full of Erebor as it will be, Erebor restored with Thorin on the throne and his family beside him. Except Buffy is walking out of the mountain towards a dark figure in the distance- a shadow in the form of a man. Fíli calls for her but she does not turn round.

In the distance there is a rumbling like thunder and the sky flares red.

/

In the morning his head feels fuzzy, as though he's had too much to drink, but that can't be right because he never went to the inn last night, he's sure. But it's difficult to focus and his eyelids feel heavy and thoughts are weighty and difficult to form.

He blinks slowly and his sister weaves into view, gold and silver and something that looks like guilt.

"Buffy?"

"Oin came by and gave you more pain relief," she murmurs, running her fingers through his hair. "You should still be asleep like Kíli."

There's something he wants to tell her, he thinks. Something important. But he can't think straight and the words are slipping away from him, and Buffy's fingers through his hair are lulling him to sleep but he can't, he must stay awake-

He catches the glimmer of silver at the edge of his vision and his eyes narrow as he tries to focus on the metal. It's small and worked into the shape of a cross, and then it is gone from his sight as his sister puts her fingers over the silver pendant and tucks it back beneath the fur and leather of her outfit. He wants to ask her what it is, what it means. Why his heart suddenly sinks in his chest and he feels the loss of something he doesn't even remember having.

Something wet slides down his cheek. Someone is crying, he thinks and wonders who.

His eyelids feel too heavy to keep open now and perhaps it would be fine just to have a little nap. Perhaps, whatever it is he wanted to tell Buffy, _to warn her_ some part of him nags, will come back to him after sleep.

Still the glimmer of silver lingers in his mind and he wonders vaguely why something so small causes him such dread.

There is the press of lips against his forehead and suddenly sleep rolls him under as a rock under a wave.

He dreams of fire and gold and the end of all things. Wakes, sometime later that night, screaming his sister's name.

She does not appear.

* * *

**Please read & review.**

Yes, there will be more chapter coming, possibly three or four, depending on how the characters behave when I attempt to write their points of view. But never fear, the end is already written and I know what's going to happen so hopefully (though this is me) there shouldn't be an agony of waiting for too long.


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